“I think we have to have in democratic circumstances respectful engagement. It should not be confrontational. It doesn’t help anybody to have confrontation..."

And all I could think about was how she let those prisoners get treated. Respectful engagement! She seems so out of touch to me. I think she thought she wouldn't have problems at Stanford. I also remember how her people floated her name as a vice presidential pick. Ridiculous.

What a tired routine you have, Ann. You pick out of context the most outrageous, poorly considered quote and then put it up on your web site to generate traffic.

Do you put up the text from the petition? No. Do you (falsely and dishonestly) make it seem like Rice was being compared to Hitler? Yes.

Condi Rice was, literally, a "warmonger" as she helped sell a war to the American people. That's a fact -- not an opinion -- when she was warning of Iraq having nukes and spreading other disinformation.

Some people sell fish - they are "fishmongers." Some people sell wars - they are "warmongers." This is the role Rice chose to play. And people back home will not sweep it under the rug. Good for them.

I just watched a movie about a Colonel escorting home a Marine killed in Iraq. This is real, not some word game for you to use to stir web traffic. Real lives have been destroyed, American and Iraqi. Thousands of people of all kinds - killed, wounded and maimed in Rice's war.

College life absolutely baffles me; was it this stupidly surreal when I went through? If only I had not been so focused on getting la-, er, my degree and keeping my nose to the grindstone, I would have paid attention to all the silly things the professors were doing.

How could Stanford NOT want Rice to come to the school and teach there? She was the National Security Advisor AND Secretary of State during some of the most tumultuous events of the past fifty years for God's sake. You could sharpshoot all the Bush administration's policies of the last 8 years every time you came to class. If nothing else it would keep you awake.

It would be worth demeaning yourself and applying for John Edwards' "Everyone Goes to College" grants to audit one of her classes, and these knuckleheads are going to diss her because of stupid war crimes?

Fine, I hope Stanford students get their way, keep her out, and the University hires some unwashed hippy loser PhD with asthma and a monotone voice in her place, and all the shrill War Crime yellers are forced to sit through his boring class every MWF from 8-9 A.M, and read his stupid book that cost $89.00, hopefully something like Adlai Stevenson, the Formative Years, or some comparable tripe, and they have to spend $3.95 on an extra large coffee just to stay awake in class, especially when they're hung over friday morning.

Condi Rice: "We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon."

Well, Condi, why should we believe you about anything? And, why should you continue teaching when your word is mud?

Condi Rice: "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Saddam had NO nuclear weapons development activities. As many people, including Scott Ritter, tried to explain in the run up to the invasion and occupation. They (we) were derided for disagreeing with the Bush Administration.

Regarding the forged documents used to make the case that Saddam tried to buy uranium in Africa:""no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."

FALSE. This was hotly contested and flagged in the 2002 NIE.

Condi lies to cover Bush-Cheney incompetence:"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon. that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,"

Apparently, the FAA (in Spring of 2001) was "nobody." There were other warnings.

Jason posts some questions/responses for me:How can she post one sentence of an article and have it NOT be out of context?

There are several other sentences that would not mislead the reader.

If you READ the article you'll notice there was no petition, just a letter.

I did READ the article. And I READ this:Anti-Rice petition makes war crimes allegationMy emphasis. (Actually, this is not quite right because the text they print only refers to other "serious allegations," not actually making an actual claim).

I think they ARE comparing her to Hitler.

Well, first, one person said it. And it could be read as a comparison, or not. I think it was a bad choice of words and one should try to be careful in what they say when being interviewed.

Maybe instead of a book, we could make a video, and include Bill and Hillary, John Kerry, Rockefeller, and countless others tell us that:a. Sadam most certanly has WMD andb. He wouldn't hesitate to use them if he were allowed to stay in power.

I love the far left. They are the epitome of buffoonery. They are also pillars of hypocrisy. They, who so cherish civil liberties, would deny a person the right return to work after government service. If this is what higher educaqtion has come to then this country is in big trouble. Ooops, I forgot. They are running this country now. We are in deep trouble.

"Shahid" is very willing to sacrifice other peoples' lives to make the world as he thinks it should be:

It's as if the lives of the 25 million liberated and allowed their first measure of self-determination means nothing to these purveyors of "human rights, the U.S. Constitution and international law."

So, let me get this straight. You (and Condi Rice) decided that the deaths of 10s of thousands of Iraqis (setting aside American lives for now) were justified to overthrow Saddam.

Keep in mind, the Iraqi's could have made this decision to have 10s of thousands of them die overthrowing the tyrant Saddam. They did not, though God knows some tried.

But you decide their lives and limbs are okay to be sacrificed in the pursuit of YOUR cause.

Can you grasp how bloody arrogant that is? To sacrifice other people on your own altar of this corrupted notion of "freedom." Now, when millions are living in exile, after the ethnic division of Baghdad?

First of all, tens of thousands of Iraqis did not die in Iraq as a result of the U.S. occupation. No credible source comes anywhere near suggesting that.

Second of all, yes. American interests are important and sometimes people die as a result of their attainment. The same can be said of German interests, or North Korean interests, or the interests of Hamas.

It's really, really silly for leftist loons or any other kinds of loons to suggest that somehow this kind of thing is going to stop. It's gone on since the beginning of time. It will go on until the end of time.

The fact that the United States even cares about minimizing death and destruction, or allows you to anguish about it, is a testament to the awesomeness of our country and its leaders. Very mich including Condi Rice.

"Do you (falsely and dishonestly) make it seem like Rice was being compared to Hitler? Yes"

I read the article AL. Rice was clearly being compared to Hitler. Exactly what part of the sentence is taken out of context?

Also, Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons, albeit not very effectively, and did attempt to buy uranium in Africa. That some documents supporting these facts were forged doesn't alter that reality. CBS displayed forged documents that said W was a member of an ANG unit in Texas. That doesn't mean he wasn't, just that the documents in question were forgeries.

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon. that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,"

I'd be more inclined to call it ignorance than a lie, but I'll give you this one. Given that the hijacked airliner as missile scenario had been both thought of and attempted before - in this country - this was a staggeringly idiotic remark.

Spoken like a true liberal intellectual. I'll bet mammy and pappy back in the trailer park are realllly proud of their little Alpha. That thar college edumication shore gave him some high falutin vocabulary!!!!!!!!!

Beta -- Is that really a bad thing to bring Palestinians to the United States for higher education? They may end up like that poor, sad tool Sayyid Qutb, who seemed to get warped by his experience. Or, they may end up like the countless other people who have come into our orbit and been marinated very much for the good by our way of life and our freedoms and our culture.

Just so you know, it has been American policy to do this kind of thing for years and years, under every president. Let's pick our battles and not bitch about everything the left does. Let's focus on the definitively shitty stuff. God knows: there's plenty.

HRC just announced a million dollar scholarship to be used for Palestinians attending American Universities.

I hope it is not taxpayer money? What gives her that right? Oh, yeah. Now I get it. They get to go to American Universities, meet, mingle with, and identify American Jews, and kill them; all in the name of higher education and the glorification of the Clinton Crime Family.

Peter -- Again, every administration has done this scholarship thing since WWII. It's common and, while there are drawbacks, there are also many benefits. The key thing to believe is that American culture is good and that people will be better disposed to us if they are exposed to it.

Stanford is not a monolith, nor are liberals. You run the risk of looking like a monolith yourself, however, when you bring up tenuous connections to reformed terrorists, and isolated, arrogant professors.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "the academy", but Stanford is a private university, so unless you're making gifts to Stanford, you're sharing no burden there.

Well, it is pretty silly. A bunch of liberal loons with margin connection to reality.

My guess is that regardless of whether Stanford really wants Dr. Rice back, they probably don't have a choice - she likely has tenure there. If not from her first time there, then probably when she became provost.

And, so, the school either has her teach, or just pays her and gives her an office.

Oh, and just to point out the absurdity, whoever is accusing Dr. Rice of simularity with Hitler totally misunderstands the nature of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei).

Rob -- You don't need the Internet to know that a tremendous majority of students at Stanford pay for school with student loans -- subsidized to the tune of hundreds of millions by the federal government each year -- and with direct grants from federal and state governments. Virtually every student at every school in America is eligible for one or both. Furthermore, the government is the primary funder of research projects at all universities. This is basic stuff, dude.

There are two schools in the country that accept no government money -- Grove City College and Hillsdale College. Both are openly conservative/libertarian institutions.

Finally, if you don't like snark, blog comments aren't really for you. Are they?

@Seven Machos - Of course! I totally should have known that. Thanks for clearing that up.

I guess the questions then become: is it screwed up, and is it far left indoctrination? I mean, how did all the neocons make it through university free of the indoctrination? How did the free market capitalists make it out with their free market theories intact?

I think I'll retain my autonomy with respect to whether blog comments are for me or not, but thanks for the advice.

Neocon is a code word for Jewish people who are more conservative. It's identical to the way that people are always calling black quarterbacks "athletic." Both are terribly racist for a variety of reasons.

Anyway, the point of a college education in the liberals arts and sciences is to learn how to think better. I have had professors who were very far to the left who did a good job at that. My favorite professor ever was a leftist Straussian with some truly bizarre ideas. I love that man like a father.

Just as nutball leftists should be allowed to teach and work at universities, so should very sensible (and in this case very influential) statespersons such as Condi Rice. The fact this is even an issue shows how totalitarian the left is.

My class President went to Stanford - the son of a wealthy conservative owner of a civil engineering firm. The boy was a lazy ass liberal who actually got kicked out of Stanford for illegal activity in his last Senior semester.

He ended up at the local comm college, found work in a local restaurant (hell of an embarrassment for him), and lived the no-money-from-asshole-dad life foe about 10 years, during which he started a cleaning company on his own.

He sold the cleaning company 8 years ago, went to USC and got his engineering degree. Asshole Dad - the conservative who cut his liberal prankster son loose, hired his son 3 years ago into the firm. Dad died last year, Son is now 2nd in command.

"Can you grasp how bloody arrogant that is? To sacrifice other people on your own altar of this corrupted notion of "freedom." Now, when millions are living in exile, after the ethnic division of Baghdad?

Really, that's sick."

So why do you do it? You apparently were cool with Saddam killing Kurds. And Iraqis. And Iranians. Kuwaitis. The occasional American pilot. Trying to do a former US President. Really, that's sick.

It sounds like your experience bears out the main point I was making, that Stanford is not a monolith, and also my subsequent point, that any indoctrination that might be happening is neither comprehensively effective nor unavoidable.

And yet somehow idea that Stanford isn't a monolith doesn't apply to the the left, and how totalitarian they are. That's not making sense to me.

As to whether or not Rice will speak at Stanford, what are the chances that this letter will from this small group within Stanford will cause all of Stanford to uninvite her?

@ Seven Machos - Ha, I expect you'll get the news before I will, but seriously: obviously there are vocal liberals doing crazy stuff at Stanford, but that's not all of Stanford. It's not even a sizable portion of Stanford. And it's certainly not the entire left wing.

Also, someone at or near Stanford, pitching a fit, does not a totalitarian make. A gadfly, perhaps.

You may not like Rice's politics but she has far more real world experience than some other Stanford professors, who have never been out of the country except to visit their grandparents in Tel Aviv or to smoke pot in Amsterdam.

I would posit to Alpha Liberal and other leftist playhouse pals, that the Minister Geoff Browning got it right, but didn't quite understand the hypocrisy of his statement to the rest of his screed.

You cannot be 'neutral' to oppression. The U.S. saw much and very evil oppression in Iraq and chose to no longer be 'neutral'. Rice was part of a team that sought and delivered justice to the 25mm Iraqis. They now have a chance at a better life.

Is there a cost to such undertakings, yes. That is why success and victory was paramount, unlike our current One and his minions in Congress who tried to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Those brave soldiers and innocent civilians who died or were injured/maimed, are the true heroes.

That Minister Browning cannot see his own hypocrisy is another shining example of Liberaldom's "Don't let the facts get in the way of your beliefs" Syndrome.

""Guerilla theatre project with STAMP* People will dress up as military recruiters and “recruit” people* mobilize males!* Brochures about real facts of the war, publicize* Scheduled to be some time in May

Here they are on facebook."We will work to create an inclusive, tolerant, respectful environment that engages with issues facing us in the world, and breaks the silence on the serious questions war raises in our community.

We will work, through nonviolent and peaceful means, to make Stanford a better place in a better world: free of war criminals, free of war profiteers, a place of knowledge and learning for peaceful ends, and aware of the role that the university, and more broadly the United States, plays in the world. "

LOL. That's so goddamned cute, it makes me want to hurl. So earnest they are, so ineffectual and stupid and easily fooled. Funny, funny shit.

@Rob, I'm sure there is not alot of taxpayer money at Stanford, but I would think there are Pell Grants and fed. research dollars showing up in some amount.

My complaint really was that we as taxpayers send an enormous amount of money into the abyss of education at all levels in this country, and are largely rewarded with a system that despises at least half of us.

I love the irony of this statement: “Neutrality helps oppression,” Browning said. In other words those who standby and do nothing are aiding oppression? So the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do? What is next Mr. Browning? Should we take on North Korea? Sudan? Somalia?

Reader, sorry for clogging up your inbox with duplicate posts -- it's important to me that I comment as private citizen Joan and not as a representative of ThyCa, the organization with which I am associated as a cancer support group facilitator. Since I recently launched my own group, I'm more often logged in with that other ID now -- I have to get into the habit of checking which account I'm posting under before I hit publish. To be honest, I did know there is such a thing as getting email updates, and I get them on my own blog, but no, it never occurred to me that anyone would subscribe to such updates on a blog like Althouse where there is so much comment traffic! A perfect example of to each her own, yes?

Pogo, yeah, this is some funny shit, the kind that makes you laugh because if you don't, you'll cry.

We also went over the possibility that the indoctrination is neither as effective nor as unavoidable as hyperbole suggests.

But what to do, what to do?

12:39 PM

--Oh, well, people overcame the Soviets' indoctrination too, therefore there was no indoctrination? Solzhenitsyn was free in his mind, therefore Russia was free in its mind? People resisted torture, therefore there was no torture?

@Rob, I'm not sure if there is a payoff as such, but I think hyperbole expresses with a slightly humorous or exaggerated edge the real fear that the country I love is going to become unrecognizable to me, that those who believe the power of the collective trumps the rights of the individual are not the fringe anymore. They are the new keepers of the convential wisdom. In the media and in education from K5 through Phd studies.

I also think after 8 years of hearing all about chimpymchitlerhalliburtonwardodgingdaddysboy it's fun to play for the team out of power and make a little mischief along the way.

OK, so you're comparing the historical Soviet Union to today's American education system. While that gives you an opportunity to render clever statements about Solzhenitsyn, it's not honest - the historical Soviet Union is not equal to the contemporary United States. With respect to education, the Soviet Union's education was highly centralized and run specifically by the government. In the United States, there is a strong mix of public/private concerns running the education system.

What I think I'm saying is this: hyperbolic statements about all-powerful, unavoidable left wing indoctrination throughout the educational system are also dishonest.

I can appreciate that, and I don't resist the chuckles when I read comments on this blog. I'll suggest that they payoff is a release valve, which is a pretty vital function.

I can relate to the fear as well. But this great nation has been engaged in the pursuit of the balance between the rights of the collective and the rights of the individual for a long time, and I want to do what I can to continue that.

I don't think that the people in this article are anything but fringe. If you're not talking about Todd Davies and the SSNW, who are you talking about?

Analogies by their nature are imperfect and you like nothing better than to cavil at a hair when you find one unflattering.

It is perfectly obvious to me - should be to you and to these twits who are the subject - that no possible comparison can be drawn with any more sophistication than "they are both large."

And yet, indoctrination takes many forms, is sometimes widespread or even omnipresent (take peer pressure), and can be resisted by some. Certainly the USSR had more of SOME resources available to program its people. But in terms of such subtleties as production values, we far exceed them - a lone Photoshop expert far exceeds any resources of the former Soviet Union - and so I don't think the comparison is ENTIRELY inapposite.

I'm sure you will be making your own comparisons freely in areas where they flatter you or deprecate your opponents. And I'm also sure you will be called on it. So, I guess -

The difference between a centrally-run education system and a distributed one is certainly not a hair. Your analogy is beyond the ordinary level of imperfect. If you have perhaps set up for yourself, a bogeyman US government that explicitly condones a program of indoctrination, and enforces that program by locking up or disappearing dissidents, your analogy gains strength, but since that isn't the case, your overall argument weakens.

But neither size, production values, or resources alone can make a program of indoctrination. Intent is also necessary. And even those don't make an effective program of indoctrination - for that you must have an effect.

My argument is that enough people in the United States exit the education system without being indoctrinated in the way that Beta Conservative indicated.

I'm unlikely to affirm your prediction about comparisons precisely because, as you point out, they are imperfect, and there are better ways to make a case.

2. ...Oh screw it, you give me a headache. All right, let's walk back the cat.

You implied that, since the usufructs of our Gramscian long march are somewhat equivocal of result, that the premise of indoctrination by these subverted institutions is thence negated.

Well, nobody's perfect! Put another way, the race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but that's the way to bet. Or, more immediately relevant, there were chinks in the armor even of Soviet social structures allowing light for some, air for others, escape for a few.

It can hardly be denied that education intends to form the mind - in this sense "indoctrination" or "propaganda" is a mere value judgment. And I do believe it was American education we were facing off vs. the Reds en masse, not a straight up US-USSR comparison. So, your own allusion to the US as ogre is also fallacious. Analogies to individual repressive techniques used in academe could be pointed out readily enough.

But I'm bored. Let's skip straight to your argument:

My argument is that enough people in the United States exit the education system without being indoctrinated in the way that Beta Conservative indicated.

It's more than an implication, it's a direct statement, provided you'll grant the question of degree remains open.

You compared the US to the USSR; I declared the comparison dishonest. I offered that you may have a bogeyman (and yes, belief in bogeymen is irrational). If you do not, then you do not, but that doesn't mean that I made a relevant comparison between the two.

We agree that education, indoctrination, and propaganda are judgment calls.

So, while the US educational system may have the wherewithal to implement a system of left wing indoctrination, without central planning, there cannot be intent, and as we see, there hasn't been a significant effect.

So, while the US educational system may have the wherewithal to implement a system of left wing indoctrination, without central planning, there cannot be intent, and as we see, there hasn't been a significant effect.

How does that follow at all?

If, without indoctrination, 90% of the populace would have voted against Obama, but instead only 40%+ did, that would be a pretty significant effect, don't you agree?

Just for starters. I won't even go into the foolish idea that "indoctrination" is subjective.

@Blake - If you'll take a look at the historical election figures, I think you'll see that there is no compelling trend toward liberal landslides, or even liberal victories, over the last 100 years. There are some spikes, sure, but there are some conservative ones as well. I'm looking at popular vote, by the way.

I would agree with your assertion, if only it wasn't contradicted by this picture. I say that if there is a program of of left-wing indoctrination in the school system, then there must be an effect on the presidential elections.

No trend toward liberal victories over the past 100 years? And you support this by showing election results where liberals ran against other liberals?

Last one I'm sure of was Reagan. Before that Goldwater. Before that, what, Coolidge? Maybe Eisenhower, if you overlook the fact that he had the best chance of reversing FDR's acts and didn't take it.

Liberal indoctrination is so thorough, so-called conservatives have embraced the notion that not having the government reach into every part of our lives is somehow radical.

In any event, political parties are volatile things. George Wallace was the (Democrat) conservative running in '68 when the massively liberal Nixon won.

I know Nixon is a liberal bogeyman, even to this day featured as an arch-villain in Watchmen and "Futurama", but he started the EPA, opened relations with China and tried wage and price fixing, so if he was conservative, then conservative has no meaning--or the meaning it has is merely a mostly successful attempt to narrow our political choices to "totalitarian state run by hippies" vs. "totalitarian state run by non-hippies".

Actually, no, I don't allow that there's any overlap between education and indoctrination; in fact, I hold the two to be diametrically opposed. It is the difference between observation and evaluation. It does not even matter if the evaluation is correct!

I don't really have time to go into detail about how this happened but you can see this at Hector's place to get a sense of what was going on. This is the tail end of the effort (which has no survived the empire itself by over 15 years).

It's not a small subject and universities are only part of it, but they're an important part.

I could say something about your hair and pulling your finger out of the socket, but that could be perceived as jealousy seeing as you still have a fairly full head of it - you bastard! ;->

2) Um, more later, I am in the middle of a busy workday. But I think you're using sophistry. I could also dip into Arkhipelag GULag and find examples of those who beat the system and say commie trick don't work...

but like I said, ain't got all day right now. Let me just invite you to sharpen your pencil and IBB.

But while I sharpen my pencil, let's be clear: I'm saying that any purported program of indoctrination has been so ineffective as to be insignificant, and I think you're saying that of course a few people can beat the system of indoctrination. That seems to be the argument we're having, and those are not the same things.

Yeah, and you're forty and I started losing mine at twenty, so boo hoo to you too. Naw, enjoy it.

But while I sharpen my pencil, let's be clear: I'm saying that any purported program of indoctrination has been so ineffective as to be insignificant, and I think you're saying that of course a few people can beat the system of indoctrination. That seems to be the argument we're having, and those are not the same things.

You support what you're saying, above, by noting (anecdotal) cases of people not indoctrinated. I retort by saying that in fact, even in what I concede is a more effective system of indoctrination (the USSR), there were people not indoctrinated, and refer to anecdotes that memory fails me on reciting verbatim.